CHAPTER XX
ON THE LECTURE PLATFORM
At the close of the Civil War, Clara Barton wanted to write a book. Other women who had engaged in war work were writing books, and the books were being well received. She had as much to tell as any other one woman, and she thought she would like to tell it.
In this respect she was entirely different from Miss Dorothea Dix. She met Miss Dix now and then during the war, and made note of the fact in her diary, but either because these meetings occurred in periods when she was too busy to make full record, or because nothing of large importance transpired between them, she gives no extended account of them. Miss Dix was superintendent of female nurses, and Miss Barton was doing an independent work, so there was little occasion for them to meet. But all her references to Miss Dix which show any indication of her feeling manifest a spirit of very cordial appreciation of Dorothea Dix’s work. Miss Dix managed her work in her own line, insisting that nurses whom she appointed should be neither young nor good-looking, and fighting her valiant battles with quite as much success as in general could have been expected. But Dorothea Dix had no desire for publicity. She shrank from giving to the world any details of her own life, partly because of her unhappy childhood memories, and partly because she did not believe in upholding in the mind of young women the successful career of an unmarried woman. Accepting as she did her own lonely career, and making it a great blessing to others, she did not desire that young women should emulate it or consider it the ideal life. She wished instead that they should find lovers, establish homes, and become wives and mothers.
Clara Barton, too, had very high regard for the home, and she saw quite enough of the folly of sentimental young women who were eager to rush to the hospitals and nurse soldiers, but she did not share Miss Dix’s fear of an attractive face, and she knew rather better than Miss Dix the value of publicity. Timid as she was by nature, she had discovered the power of the Press. She had succeeded in keeping up her supply of comforts for wounded soldiers largely by the letters which she wrote to personal friends and to local organizations of women in the North. She made limited but effective use of the newspaper for like purposes. At first she did not fully realize her own gift as a writer. Once or twice she bemoaned in her diary the feebleness of her descriptive effort. If she could only make people see what she had actually seen, she could move their hearts, and the supply of bandages and delicacies for her wounded men would be unfailing.
Her search for missing soldiers led her to a larger utilization of the Press, and gave her added confidence in her own descriptive powers. Her name was becoming more and more widely known, and she thought a book by her, if she could procure means to publish it, would afford her opportunity for self-expression and quite possibly be financially profitable.
On this subject she wrote two letters to Senator Henry Wilson. They are undated, and it is probable that she never sent either of them, but they show what was in her heart. One of these reads as follows:
My always good Friend:
Among all the little trials, necessities, and wants, real or imaginary, that I have from time to time brought and laid down at your feet, or even upon your shoulders, your patience has never once broken, or if it did your broad charity concealed the rent from me, and I come now in the hope that this may not prove to be the last feather. It is not so much that I want you to do anything as to listen and advise, and it may be all the more trying as I desire the advice to be plain, candid, and honest even at the risk of wounding my pride.
Perhaps no previous proposition of mine, however wild, has ever so completely astonished you as the present is liable to do. Well, to end suspense. I am desirous of writing a book. You will very naturally ask two questions—what for and what of. In reply to the first. The position which I have assumed before the public renders some general exposition necessary. They require to be made acquainted with me, or perhaps I might say they should either be made to know more of me or less. As it is, every one knows my name and something of what I am or have been doing, but not one in a thousand has any idea of the manner in which I propose to serve them. Out of six thousand letters lying by me, probably not two hundred show any tolerably clear idea of the writer as to what use I am to make of that very letter. People tell me the color of the hair and eyes of the friends they have lost, as if I were expected to go about the country and search them. They ask me to send them full lists of the lost men of the army; they tell me that they have looked all through my list of missing men and the name of their son or husband or somebody’s else is not on it, and desire to be informed why he is made an exception. They suppose me a part of the Government and it is my duty to do these things, or that I am carrying on the “business” as a means of revenue and ask my price, as if I hunted men at so much per head. But all suppose me either well paid or abundantly able to dispense with it; and these are only a few of the vague ideas which present themselves in my daily mail. A fair history of what I have done and desire to do, and a plain description of the practical working of my system, would convince people that I am neither sorceress nor spiritualist and would appall me with less of feverish hope and more of quiet, potent faith in the final result.
Then there is all of Andersonville of which I have never written a word. I have not even contradicted the base forgeries which were perpetrated upon me in my absence. I need not tell you how foully I am being dealt by in this whole matter and the crime which has grown out of the wickedness which overshadows me. I need to tell some plain truths in a most inexpensive manner, that the whole country shall not be always duped and honest people sacrificed that the ambition of one man be gratified. I do not propose controversy, but I have a truth to speak; it belongs to the people of our country and I desire to offer it to them.
And lastly, if a suitable work were completed and found salable and any share of proceeds fell to me, I need it in the prosecution of the work before me.
Next—What of? The above explanation must have partially answered that I would give the eight months’ history of my present work, and I think I might be permitted by the writers to insert occasionally a letter sent me by some noble wife or mother, and there are no better or more touching letters written.
I would show how the expedition to Andersonville grew out of this very work; how inseparably connected the two were; and how Dorence Atwater’s roll led directly to the whole work of identifying the graves of the thirteen thousand sleeping in that city of the dead.
I would endeavor to insert my report of the expedition now with the Secretary. I have some materials from which engravings could be made, I think, of the most interesting features of Andersonville, and my experiences with the colored people while there I believe to have been of exceeding interest. I would like to relate this. You recollect I have told you that they came from twenty miles around to see me to know if Abraham Lincoln was dead and if they were free. This, if well told, is a little book of itself. And if still I lack material I might go back a little and perhaps a few incidents might be gleaned from my last few years’ life which would not be entirely without interest. I think I could glean enough from this ground to eke out my work, which I would dedicate to the survivors of Andersonville and the friends of the missing men of the United States Army. I don’t know what title I would give it.
Now, first, I want your yes or no. If the former, I want your advice still further. Who can help me do all this? I have sounded among my friends, and all are occupied; numbers can write well, but have no knowledge of book-making which I suppose to be a trade in itself and one of which I am entirely ignorant. I never attempted any such thing myself and have no conceit of my own ability as a writer. I don’t think I can write, but I would try to do something at it; might do more if there were time, but this requires to be done at once. I want a truthful, easy, and I suppose touching rather than logical book, which it appears to me would sell among the class of persons to whom I should dedicate it, and their name is legion. Now, it is no wonder that I have found no one ready to take hold and help me carry this on when it is remembered that I have not ten thousand dollars to offer them in advance, but must ask that my helper wait and share his remuneration out of the profits. If he knew me, he would know that I would not be illiberal, especially as pecuniary profit is but a secondary consideration. It is of greater importance to me that I bring before the country and establish the facts that I desire than that I make a few thousand dollars out of it, but I would like to do both if I could, but the first if not the last. But I want to stand as the author and it must be my book, and it should be in very truth if I had the time to write it. I want no person to reap a laurel off it (dear knows I have had enough of that of late), but the man or woman who could and would take hold and work side by side with me in this matter, making it a heart interest, and having my interest at heart, be unselfish and noble with me as I think I would be with them, should reap pecuniary profit if there were any to reap. An experienced book-maker or publisher would understand if such a work would sell—it seems to me that it would.
Now, can you point me to any person who could either help me do this or be so kind as to inform me that I must not attempt it?
It will be noted that in this letter she indicates her present lack of means to publish such a book as she had in mind. She had not always lacked means for such an object. While her salary as a teacher had never been large, she had always saved money out of it. The habit of New England thrift was strong upon her, and her investments were carefully made so that her little fund continually augmented. Her salary in the Patent Office was fourteen hundred dollars, and for a time sixteen hundred dollars, and though she paid a part of it to her substitute during the latter portion of the war, she was able to keep up the rental of her lodging and meet her very modest personal expenses without drawing upon her savings. The death of her father brought to her a share in his estate, and this was invested in Oxford, conservatively and profitably. When she began her search for missing soldiers, therefore, she had quite a little money of her own. She began that work of volunteer service, expecting it to be supported as her work in the field had been supported, by the free gifts of those who believed in the work. When a soldier or a soldier’s mother or widow sent her a dollar, she invariably returned it.
As the work proceeded, she was led to believe that Congress would make an appropriation to reimburse her for her past expenditures, and add a sufficient appropriation for the continuance of the work. She had two influential friends at court, Senator Henry Wilson, her intimate and trusted friend, Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs of the Senate, and General Benjamin F. Butler, with whose army she had last served in the field.
She knew very well how laws were passed and official endorsements secured. She frequently interceded with her friends in high places on behalf of people or causes in whom she believed. She, in common with Miss Dix, had altercations with army surgeons, yet her diary shows her working hard to secure for them additional recognition and remuneration. On Sunday, January 29, 1865, she attempted to attend the third anniversary of the Christian Commission, but the House of Representatives was packed; thousands, she says, were turned away. That afternoon or evening Senator Wilson called on her and she talked with him concerning army surgeons: “I spoke at length with Mr. Wilson on the subject of army surgeons. I think their rank will be raised. I believe I will see Dr. Crane in the morning and make an effort to bring Dr. Buzzell here to help frame the bill.”
She did exactly what she believed she would do; saw Dr. Crane, got her recommendation that Dr. Buzzell be allowed to come, and then went to the Senate. The thing she labored for was accomplished, though it called for considerable added effort.
About this same time she had a visit from a woman who was seeking to obtain the passage of a special act for her own benefit. She shared Clara Barton’s bed and board, with introduction to Senator Wilson and other influential people, until the bill passed both houses, and still as Miss Barton’s guest continued in almost frantic uncertainty, awaiting the President’s signature. It happened at the very time Clara Barton was very desirous of getting her work for missing soldiers under way. The idea came to her in the night of February 19, 1865:
Thought much during the night, and decided to invite Mr. Brown to accompany me to Annapolis and to offer my services to take charge of the correspondence between the country and the Government officials and prisoners at that point while they continued to arrive.
Mr. Brown called upon her that very day and they agreed to go to Annapolis the next day, which they did. She nursed her brother Stephen, accomplished a large day’s work, did her personal washing at nine o’clock at night, and the next day went to Annapolis. There she met Dorothea Dix; found a captain who deserved promotion, and resolved to get it for him; assisted in welcoming four boatloads of returned prisoners, and defined more clearly in her own mind the kind of work that needed to be done.
The next Sunday Senator Wilson called on her again, and she told him she had offered her services for this work, and wanted the President’s endorsement in order that she might not be interfered with. Senator Wilson offered to go with her to see President Lincoln, and they went next day, but did not succeed in seeing him. She went again next day, this time without Senator Wilson, for he was busy working on the bill for the lady who was her guest, so she sought to obtain her interview with President Lincoln through the Honorable E. B. Washburne, of Illinois. Mr. Washburne agreed to meet her at the White House, and did so, but the President was in a conference preceding a Cabinet meeting, and the Cabinet meeting, which was to begin at noon, was likely to last the rest of the day, so Mr. Washburne took her paper and said he would see the President and obtain his endorsement. She saw Senator Wilson that afternoon, and reported that her papers were still unendorsed, and General Hitchcock was advising her to go on without any formal authority. She was not disposed to do it, for she felt sure that she would no sooner get established than Secretary Stanton would interfere. The difficulty was to get at the President in those crowded days just before his second inaugural, when events both in Washington and in the field were crowding tremendously.
SENATOR HENRY WILSON’S LETTER TO PRESIDENT LINCOLN
Senator Wilson was still interested in what she wanted to do, but was preoccupied. “He had labored all night on Miss B.’s bill.” In fact Clara Barton read the probable fate of her own endeavor. Senator Wilson had given himself with such ardor to the cause of her guest that he had no time to help her. She had borrowed a set of furs to wear when she went to the President. She took them back that afternoon and wrote in her diary: “Very tired; could not reconcile my poor success; I find that some hand above mine rules and restrains my progress; I cannot understand, but try to be patient, but still it is hard. I was never more tempted to break down with disappointment.”
On Thursday, March 2, two days before the inauguration, she went again to see the President. Just as she reached the White House in the rain, she saw Secretary Stanton go in. She waited until 5.15, and Stanton did not come out. She returned home “still more and more discouraged.” Her guest, also, had been out in the rain, but was overjoyed. Her bill had passed the Senate without opposition, and would go to the House next day, if not that very night. Miss Barton wrote in her diary: “I do not tell her how much I am inconvenienced by her using all my power. I have no helper left, and I am discouraged. I could not restrain the tears, and gave up to it.”
It is hardly to be wondered that she almost repented of her generosity in loaning Senator Wilson to her friend when she herself had so much need of him. Nor need she be blamed for lying awake and crying while her guest slept happily on the pillow beside her. She did not often cry.
Just at this time she was doubly anxious, for Stephen, her brother, was nearing his end, and Irving Vassall, her nephew, was having hemorrhages and not long for this world, and her day’s journal shows a multiplicity of cares crowding each day.
Stephen died Friday, March 10. She was with him when he died and mourned for her “dear, noble brother.” She believed he had gone to meet the loved ones on the other side, and she wondered whether her mother was not the first to welcome him. His body was embalmed, and a service was held in Washington, and another in Oxford. Between the time of Stephen’s death and her departure with his body, she received her papers with the President’s endorsement. General Hitchcock presented them to her. She wrote:
We had a most delightful interview. He aided me in drawing up a proper article to be published; said it would be hard, but I should be sustained through such a work, he felt, and that no person in the United States would oppose me in my work; he would stand between me and all harm. The President was there, too. I told him I could not commence just yet, and why, and he said, “Go bury your dead, and then care for others.” How kind he was!
President Johnson later endorsed the work and authorized the printing of whatever matter she required at the Government Printing Office. Her postage was largely provided by the franking privilege. Her work was a great success and the time came in the following October, when it seemed certain her department was to have official status with the payment of all its necessary expenses by the Government. On Wednesday, October 4, she wrote:
Of all my days, this, I suspect, has been my greatest, and I hope my best. About six P.M. General Butler came quickly into my room to tell me that my business had been presented to both the President and Secretary of War, and fully approved by both; that it was to be made a part of the Adjutant-General’s department with its own clerks and expenses, and that I was to be at the head of it, exclusively myself; that he made that a sine qua non, on the ground that it was proper for parents to bring up their own children; that he wished me to make out my own programme of what would be required; and on his return he would overlook it and I could enter at once upon my labor. Who ever heard of anything like this—who but General Butler? He left at 7.30 for home. I don’t know how to comport me.
On that same night she had a very different call, and the only one which the author has found referred to in all her diaries where any man approached her with an improper suggestion. Mingling as she did with men on the battle-field, living alone in a room that was open to constant calls from both men and women, she seems to have passed through the years with very little reason to think ill of the attitude of men toward a self-respecting and unprotected woman. That evening she had an unwelcome call, but she promptly turned her visitor out, went straight to two friends and told them what had been said to her, and wrote it down in her diary as a wholly exceptional incident, and with this brief comment, “Oh, what a wicked man!”
The plan to make her department an independent bureau seemed humanly certain to succeed. When, a few days later, General Butler left Washington without calling to see her, she was surprised, but thought it explained, a few days later, when the Boston “Journal” published an editorial saying that General Butler was to be given a seat in the Cabinet and to make his home in Washington.
But General Butler’s plans failed. He fell into disfavor, and all that he had recommended and was still pending became anathema to the War Department. The bureau was not created, and Clara Barton’s official appointment did not come.
During all this time she had been supporting her work of correspondence out of her own pocket. The time came when she invested in it the very last dollar of her quick assets. Her old friend Colonel De Witt, through whom she had obtained her first Government appointment, had invested her Oxford money. At her request he sent her the last of it, a check for $228. She wrote in her diary: “This is the last of my invested money, but it is not the first time in my life that I have gone to the bottom of my bag. I guess I shall die a pauper, but I haven’t been either stingy or lazy, and if I starve I shall not be alone; others have. Went to Mechanics’ Bank and got my check cashed.”
She certainly had not been lazy, and she never was stingy with any one but herself. Keeping her own expenses at the minimum and living so frugally that she was sometimes thought parsimonious, she saw her last dollar of invested money disappear, and recorded a grim little joke about her poverty and the possibility of starvation. But she shed no tears. In the few times when she broke down and wept, the occasion was not her own privation or personal disappointment, but the failure of some plan through which she sought to be of service to others.
This is a rather long retrospect, but it explains why Clara Barton, when she wanted to publish a book, contemplated the cost of it as an item beyond her personal means. She could have published the book at her own expense had it not been for the money she had spent for others.
Congress did not permit her to lose the money which she had expended. In all her diary and correspondence no expression of fear has been found as to her own remuneration. She thought it altogether likely she could get her money back, but there is no hint that she would have mourned, much less regretted what she had done, if she had never seen her money again.
Sad days came for Clara Barton when she found that General Butler was worse than powerless to aid her work. Heartily desirous of assisting her as he was, his name was enough to kill any measure which he sponsored. When Senator Wilson came to see her, just before Christmas, and told her that the plan was hopeless, she was already prepared for it. He suspected that she was nearly out of money, and tried to make her a Christmas gift of twenty dollars, but she declined. She wakened, on these mornings, “with the deepest feeling of depression and despair that I remember to have known.” But this feeling gave place to another. Waking in the night and thinking clearly, she was able to outline the programme of the next day’s task so distinctly and unerringly that she began to wonder whether the spirit of her noble brother Stephen was not guiding her. She did not think she was a Spiritualist, but it seemed to her that some influence which he was bringing to her from her mother helped to shape her days aright. It was such a night’s meditation that made plain to her that Dorence Atwater, released but not pardoned, must get his list published immediately, and that he must do it without a cent of compensation so that no one should ever be able to say that he had stolen the list in order to profit by it. She found that she did not need many hours’ sleep. If she could rest with an untroubled mind, she could waken and think clearly.
Gradually, her plan to publish a book changed. Instead she would write a lecture. She went to hear different women speakers, and was gratified whenever she found a woman who could speak in public effectively. A woman preacher came to Washington, and she listened to her. Even in the pulpit a woman could speak acceptably. When she traveled on the train, she was surprised and gratified to find how many people knew her, and she came to believe that the lecture platform offered her a better opportunity than the book.
There was one other consideration,—a book would cost money for its publication and the getting of it back was a matter of uncertainty. But the lecture platform promised to be immediately remunerative.
She conferred with John B. Gough. She read to him a lecture which she prepared. Said he, “I never heard anything more touching, more thrilling, in my life.” He encouraged her to proceed.
Thus encouraged, Clara Barton laid out her itinerary, and prepared for three hundred nights upon the platform. Her rates were one hundred dollars per night, excepting where she spoke under the auspices of the Grand Army Post, when her charge was seventy-five.
She took Dorence Atwater with her to look after her baggage and see to her comfort, and exhibit a box of relics which he had brought from Andersonville. She paid his expenses and a salary besides. Sometimes she thought he earned it, and sometimes she doubted it, for he was still a boy and exhibited a boy’s limitations. But she cherished a very sincere affection for him and to the end of her life counted him as one of her own kin.
During this period she had abundant time to write in her diary; for, while there were long journeys, the ordinary distance from one engagement to another was not great. She lectured in the East in various New England cities, in Cooper Institute in New York, and in cities and moderate-sized towns through Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. She had time to record and did record all the little incidents of her journey, together with the exact sum she received for each lecture, with every dime which she expended for travel, hotel accommodation, and incidental expenses. It was a hard but varied and remunerative tour. It netted her some twelve thousand dollars after deducting all expenses.
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers;
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, as the life-blood ebbed away,
And bent with pitying glances to hear what he might say;
The dying soldier faltered,—as he took that comrade’s hand,—
And said, “I never more shall see my own—my native land.
Take a message and a token to some distant friend of mine,
For I was born at Bingen, fair Bingen on the Rhine.”
With this quotation from the familiar but effective poem of Mrs. Norton, Clara Barton opened her first public lecture, which she delivered at Poughkeepsie, on Thursday evening, October 25, 1866. The lecture was an hour and a quarter in length as she read it aloud in her room, but required about an hour and a half as she delivered it before a public audience. It was, as she recorded in her diary, “my first lecture,” and “the beginning of remunerative labor” after a long period in which she had been without salary. She knew that it was her first lecture, but the audience did not. She returned from it to the house of Mr. John Mathews, where she was entertained, ate an ice-cream, went to bed and slept well. She received her first fee of one hundred dollars. On Saturday night she spoke in Schenectady, where she received fifty dollars, and found, what many a lecturer has learned, that it was not profitable to cut prices. A diminished fee means less local advertising. The audience was smaller and less appreciative. On Monday evening she spoke in Brooklyn. Theodore Tilton presided and introduced her. There she had an ovation. Mr. Tilton accompanied her to her hotel after the lecture, and she told him that she was just beginning, and asked for his criticism. He told her the lecture contained no flaw for him to mend. She went back to Washington enthusiastic over the success of her new venture. She had spoken three times, and two of the lectures had been a pronounced success. Her expenses had been less than fifty dollars, and she was two hundred dollars to the good.
She found awaiting her in Washington a large number of requests to lecture in different places, and she arranged a New England tour. She began with Worcester and Oxford. She did this with many misgivings, not forgetting the lack of honor for a prophet in his own country. She spoke in Mechanic’s Hall in Worcester, before a full house. She got her hundred dollars, but was not happy over the lecture. In Oxford, however, things went differently. She had a good house, and “the pleasantest lecture I shall ever deliver. Raced home all happy and at rest. My best visit at home.” Here she refused to receive any fee, placing the proceeds of the lecture in the hands of the overseers of the poor.
She lectured at Salem, at Marlborough, and then at Newark, and again returned to Washington convinced that her plan was a success.
Her next tour took her to Geneva and Lockport, New York, Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio, Ypsilanti and Detroit, Michigan, and on the return trip to Ashtabula, Ohio, Rochester and Dansville, New York. Her fee was a hundred dollars in every place excepting Dansville, but her lecture at this last place proved to be of importance. There she learned about the water cure, which later was to have an important influence upon her life. All these lectures on her third trip left a pleasant memory, except the one at Ashtabula, which for some reason did not go well.
She now arranged for a much longer trip. She bought her ticket for Chicago, stopping to lecture at Laporte, Indiana. She reshaped her lecture somewhat for this trip, telling how her father had fought near that town under “Mad” Anthony Wayne. She lectured in Milwaukee, Evanston, Kalamazoo, Detroit, Flint, Galesburg, Des Moines, Rock Island, Muscatine, Washington, Iowa, Dixon, Illinois, Decatur, and Jacksonville. On her way north from Jacksonville, she was in a train wreck in which several people were injured. She also had an experience in an attempt to rob her, and she resolved never to travel by sleeper again when she had to go alone. She was very nearly as good as her word. Very rarely did she make use of a sleeping-car; she traveled by day when she could, and, when unable to do so, sat up in a corner of the seat and rested as best she could.
She lectured at Mount Vernon, Aurora, Belvidere, Rockford, and other Illinois cities, and at Clinton, Iowa.
In most of these cities she was entertained in the homes of distinguished people, Dorence Atwater sometimes staying at the hotel.
In Chicago she had good visits with John B. Gough and Theodore Tilton, both of whom were on the lecture platform, and she herself lectured in the Chicago Opera House.
Other lectures followed in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and so on back to Washington. Then she took another tour through New England. She lectured in New Haven and found the people unresponsive, but she had a good time at Terryville, Connecticut. There Dorence Atwater was at home. It was characteristic of Clara Barton that at this lecture she insisted that Dorence should preside; not only so, but she called it his lecture and gave him the entire proceeds of that and the lecture at New Haven. It was a proud night for this young man, released from his two imprisonments, and she records that he presided well. She lectured again in Worcester and with better results than before, then extended her tour all over New England.
After this she made other long tours through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and States farther west. Now and then she records a disappointing experience, but in the main the results were favorable. She had no difficulty in making a return engagement; everywhere she was hailed as the Florence Nightingale of America. The press comments were enthusiastic; her bank account grew larger than it had ever been.
Clara Barton was now forty-seven years old. For eight years, beginning with the outbreak of the Civil War, she had lived in rooms on the third floor of a business block. The two flights of stairs and the unpretentiousness of the surroundings had not kept her friends away. Her daily list of callers was a long one, and her evenings brought her so many friends that she spoke humorously of her “levees.” But she had begun to long for a home of her own, which she now was well able to afford. Since the appropriation of Congress of fifteen thousand dollars and her earnings from her lectures, all of which she had carefully invested, she possessed not less than thirty thousand dollars in good interest-bearing securities. She had brought from Andersonville a colored woman, Rosa, who now presided over her domestic affairs. She spent a rather cheerless Christmas on her forty-seventh birthday in her old room on 7th Street, and determined not to delay longer. She bought a house. On the outside it looked old and shabby, but inside it was comfortable. On Tuesday, December 29, 1868, she packed her belongings. Next day she records:
December 30, 1868, Wednesday. Moved. Mr. Budd came early with five men. Mr. Vassall, Sally, and myself all worked, and in the midst of a fearful snowstorm and a good deal of confusion, I broke away from my old rooking of eight years and launched out into the world all by myself. Took my first supper in my own whole house at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Capitol Hill.
She had engaged her movers at a stipulated price of six dollars, but she was so happy with the result that she paid them ten dollars, which for a woman of Clara Barton’s careful habits indicated a very large degree of satisfaction.
The next day, assisted by her colored woman Rosa and her negro man Uncle Jarret, and with some help from two kindly neighbors, she set things to rights. It was a stormy day and she was tired, but happy to be in her home. She wrote in her diary: “This is the last day of the year, and I sometimes think it may be my last year. I am not strong, but God is good and kind.”
It is pathetic that the joy of her occupancy of her new home should have been clouded by any forebodings of this character. Her premonition that it might be her last year came very near to being true. Heavy had been the strain upon her from the day when the war began, and the events of the succeeding years had all drawn upon her vitality. What occurred at the height of her success in Bordentown came again to her at the height of her career upon the lecture platform. She rode one night to address a crowded house, and she stood before them speechless. Her voice utterly failed. Her physicians pronounced it nervous prostration, prescribed three years of complete rest, and ordered her to go to Europe.
END OF VOLUME I